100+ Years of Continuous Glassware Innovation

Published July 8th 2018 on the former blog

When we moved to the US the hardest thing for us to find were beautiful, lightweight table ware. Everything in the US is oversized and extremely heavy. They are obviously made for larger tables and larger portions. We ended up buying most ceramics at MUJI but the most challenging of all to find was beautiful, light, high quality glassware. In Japan on the other hand it doesn’t take much to come across beautiful and delicate glassware. In this post I’d like to introduce a brand I’ve recently come across called Kimura Glass.

Kimura Glass products. Photo via Pen Magazine.

Kimura Glass products. Photo via Pen Magazine.

Kimura Glass was founded in 1910 and is now lead by the 4th generation Kimura brothers. Until today they’ve stayed true to their heritage and only make hand-blown glassware. So far they have produced over 800 shapes which depicts their willingness to iterate and innovate which they still keep going.

The Kimura brothers. Photo via r-tsushin.com.

Instead of coming up with all their products in-house they keep innovation going by collaborating with various designers from various backgrounds ranging from ceramics, industrial to graphic design. Interviews with the designers are featured on their blog (only in Japanese) and you’ll see that the most recent collaboration is with a world renowned ceramics designer Ingegerd Raman with whom they launched the collection below.

Ingegerd Raman and her work. Photo by Q En Bleu.

The Ingegerd Raman Collection. Photo via Scoopnest.com.

The company’s headquarters are located in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo and they also have a showroom that can be visited when calling them in advance. They are open Thursday, Friday and Saturdays from 12:00-19:00. Visit their website for more information.